# The Email That Beat "John Wick": How a Teenage Filmmaker's Five-Year Dream Ended With Keanu Reeves Losing at Chess

> Five years ago, a teenage filmmaker from New Mexico sent a cold email to Hollywood star Keanu Reeves, hoping he'd join her chess documentary. This week, they finally sat down at the board together — and she won.

_By Akash Mitra · Aug 5, 2026_

Some chess stories start with a grandmaster and a tournament hall. This one starts with a teenager, an email, and a very famous action star who says he "hates chess."

Bianca Mitchell-Avila was 16 years old when she sent a cold email to Keanu Reeves. She had no connections in Hollywood. She just had an idea — and the nerve to ask.

"I just wanted to play chess with you!" she told him, years later, when someone asked why she'd reached out in the first place.

This week, five years after that email, her dream finally happened. At the West Coast premiere of her documentary *Madwoman's Game*, held at the Chicano Hollywood Film Festival in Pomona, California, Mitchell-Avila and Reeves met in person for the first time — and played two games of chess on stage. She won both.

### A Six-Year Project Born From One Memory

*Madwoman's Game* began as something much smaller. When film productions shut down during the pandemic, Mitchell-Avila's father suggested she make a documentary about her childhood chess club. But one memory kept pulling her back: her club once brought seven players — five boys and two girls — to a tournament where only five could compete. The two girls were cut and had to represent other schools instead.

"I was like, 'I can't be the only girl experiencing this,'" she said.

That memory grew into a six-year coming-of-age journey across the United States, Mexico, and France, where Mitchell-Avila met women whose lives had been shaped by chess. The film features well-known names from the chess world, including WGM Jennifer Shahade, WFM Alexandra Botez, IM Rusudan Goletiani, Rochelle Ballantyne, and WIM Sabrina Chevannes. But Mitchell-Avila was careful about the story she wanted to tell.

"I don't want to do this documentary where it's bashing people or making it like one side is better than the other," she said. Instead, she wanted something that would let young girls "see themselves in these women and be like, 'Yes, I can do this too.'"

### The Email That Changed Everything

Mitchell-Avila's boldest idea came almost as a joke: what if the film ended with a chess battle against Keanu Reeves? She and her father rewrote an email to his team several times before it finally landed.

"One worked, and I remember it was such an insane moment, realizing it was all kind of happening," she said. Her father's advice stuck with her: always ask, because the worst answer you can get is no.

Reeves said what convinced him wasn't a chess resume — it was her message itself. He recalled her writing something like, *"Hello Mr. Reeves, I am interested in doing this. I have this idea. I play chess. Do you play chess?"* As he put it: "chess was the hook."

He joined as executive producer in 2021 and spent years quietly mentoring her from behind the scenes, telling her to "trust the process" whenever she doubted the project. He doesn't actually appear in the finished film — but his encouragement shaped it anyway.

### Finally, a Game

On premiere night, the two met face to face for the first time. Reeves, who said he hadn't played over the board in a year, leaned fully into the moment, groaning for the crowd as his position fell apart: "I hate chess! Did I say that? I just hate chess!"

The audience loved it. And Mitchell-Avila — the girl who once got cut from her school's tournament team — walked away having beaten a movie star twice, on her own stage, at her own game.

### Why This Story Matters

You don't need to be a titled player to understand what makes this special. It's a story about believing your voice is worth sending, even to someone far more famous than you. It's about a grandmother who once told her granddaughter that "the queen is the most powerful piece on the board" — and a documentary built to prove it.

Mitchell-Avila's advice to anyone chasing a similarly unlikely dream is simple: "You get one life, one chance. It's yours to take."

Sometimes, the best chess games aren't about ratings or titles at all. Sometimes they're about a teenager who asked a question nobody expected an answer to — and five years later, checkmated it.